Patent•
Methods and apparatus for using a modified index to provide search results in response to an ambiguous search query
26 Dec 2000-
TL;DR: In this article, a system allows a user to submit an ambiguous search query and to receive potentially disambiguated search results by translating a search engine's conventional alphanumeric index into a second index that is ambiguous in the same manner as which the user's input is ambiguated, and the corresponding documents are provided to the user as search results.
Abstract: A system allows a user to submit an ambiguous search query and to receive potentially disambiguated search results. In one implementation, a search engine's conventional alphanumeric index is translated into a second index that is ambiguated in the same manner as which the user's input is ambiguated. The user's ambiguous search query is compared to this ambiguated index, and the corresponding documents are provided to the user as search results.
Citations
More filters
Patent•
22 Sep 2005
TL;DR: In this article, a system and method for ranking search results based on a series of attributes derived from the behavior of past searchers is disclosed, which provide a measure of the relevancy between a search query and a URL, file, or other resource based on its relevability to prior users.
Abstract: A system and method for ranking search results based on a series of attributes derived from the behavior of past searchers is disclosed. The attributes provide a measure of the relevancy between a search query and a URL, file, or other resource based on its relevancy to prior users. The system comprises (1) an attribute database including a plurality of prior search terms or phases; a first set of resources associated with each of the queries; and the attributes, i.e., metrics, characterizing the relevance of the first set of resources to the queries; and (2) a search processor adapted to identify a second set of resources determined to be relevant to a user query; rank each of the second set of resources based on the metrics associated with the query and resource; and provide the user with the search results ranked in accordance the metrics and displayed in a manner to increase the utility of the results for the user.
446 citations
Patent•
20 Jan 2005TL;DR: In this paper, a method comprising identifying a first profile in a social network, identifying associated profiles associated with the first profile, ranking the associated profiles, and outputting associated profiles based at least in part on the ranking is presented.
Abstract: Systems and methods for the display and navigation of a social network or set forth. According to one embodiment a method comprising identifying a first profile in a social network, identifying associated profiles associated with the first profile, ranking the associated profiles, wherein ranking is not based exclusively on a degree of separation, and outputting the associated profiles based at least in part on the ranking is set forth. According to another embodiment a method comprising identifying a user profile, identifying a member profile, determining an association path for the user profile and the member profile, and outputting the association path is set forth.
383 citations
Patent•
11 Sep 2003
TL;DR: Online auction-style listing and transaction system provides new features including for example allowing sellers to issue offers to sell before auctionstyle listing completion to encourage direct negotiation between seller and buyer for an out-of-channel transaction as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Online auction-style listing and transaction system provides new features including for example allowing sellers to issue offers to sell before auction-style listing completion to encourage direct negotiation between seller and buyer for an out-of channel transaction; postponing auction-style end upon receipt of a last-minute bid to prevent sniping; allowing sellers to contact buyers registering adverse ratings before the ratings are published; allowing sellers to terminate listings before end of auction-style listing and/or to move the listing to a classified ad from an auction-style listing; and other features.
267 citations
Patent•
11 Apr 2006
TL;DR: A search system for searching for electronic documents, and providing a search result in response to a search query is provided in this paper, which includes a search engine that executes a search based on the search query term and the equivalent terms.
Abstract: A search system for searching for electronic documents, and providing a search result in response to a search query is provided. The search system includes a processor, a user interface module adapted to receive a search query from a user, the search query having at least one search query term, and a query processing module that analyzes the search query term to identify candidate synonym words. The query processing module also determines which of the candidate synonym words are equivalent terms to the search query term, and in a same sense as the search query term. In addition, the search system includes a search engine that executes a search based on the search query term and the equivalent terms.
238 citations
References
More filters
Patent•
17 Feb 1999
TL;DR: In this article, the first portion of a data object is indexed according to the indexing method of the present invention, while the second portion of the data object are indexed using another known database technology, such as B-tree.
Abstract: A Search Engine utilizing a method and system for efficient storage and retrieval of data. The system comprises a record file, an index file, a duplicate segment file and access to a network of computers. The index files contains locations of data items, pointers to other index files, or an empty designation. The index files are arrays that contain locations corresponding to a predetermined range of characters with which the data items may be formed. Data items are stored according to the character strings of each data item. The first portion of a data object is indexed according to the indexing method of the present invention while a second portion of the data object is indexed according to another known database technology, such as B-tree.
240 citations
Patent•
07 Jun 1995TL;DR: In this paper, a method and system for generating accurate search results using a content-index is presented, where the content index is invoked in response to a query on a collection of objects.
Abstract: A method and system for generating accurate search results using a content-index is provided. In a preferred embodiment, a content-index search system is invoked in response to a query on a collection of objects. The collection of objects is indexed by the content-index and may, for example, be a corpus of documents indexed by the terms contained in the documents. The content-index search system uses the content-index to generate and store an initial search result in response to the query. Because the content-index is typically out of date with respect to a dynamically changing collection of objects, the content-index search system invokes search result correction routines to remove from the stored search result references that were incorrectly included and to add to the stored search result references that were incorrectly excluded. References that were incorrectly included include those that refer to objects that no longer exist and those that refer to objects that have been modified since the content-index was last updated and that no longer match the search criteria. References that were incorrectly excluded include those that refer to new objects that were not indexed and match the search criteria and those that refer to objects that have been modified since the content-index was last updated and that now match the search criteria.
218 citations
Patent•
30 Aug 2002TL;DR: In this article, techniques for storing multidimensional data in a relational database system have been proposed which address the problems associated with the conventional approaches for storing multi-dimensional data in relational database systems.
Abstract: Techniques are provided which address the problems associated with the conventional approaches for storing multidimensional data in a relational database system. According to technique, the many foreign key values of each row in the fact table are mapped to and replaced by a “replacement” value. A mapping function is provided that derives a replacement value from any given combination of foreign key values, and an inverse mapping function is provided to reproduce the combination of foreign key values given the replacement value. A mapping function is selected such that the foreign key value combinations of multidimensional values that are conceptually related to each other map to values that are close to each other. The rows in the fact table are then stored within the fact table in the sorted order, thus causing values that are conceptually related to each other to be stored physically near each other within the fact table. Various techniques are provided for generating the replacement value from the foreign key values by subdividing the multidimensional cube that contains all of the multidimensional values into smaller sub-cubes that are referred to as tiles. Variations on the tiling mechanism are provided. According to one approach, the cube is sub-divided into tiles based on the members of a particular level of a hierarchical dimension. According to another tiling approach, the tiles themselves may be subdivided into smaller tiles to create a hierarchy of tiles.
182 citations
Patent•
29 Sep 1999
TL;DR: In this article, a system and method that enhances the index processing performance of a multi-layer relational database manager by expanding the code generation component layer of the database manager to include a performance enhancing subroutine designed to execute functions performed by lower component layers substantially faster than if the functions were executed by such lower components.
Abstract: A system and method that enhances the index processing performance of a multi-layer relational database manager by expanding the code generation component layer of the database manager to include an index processing performance enhancing subroutine designed to execute functions performed by lower component layers substantially faster than if the functions were executed by such lower component layers. The subroutine includes logic for establishing the conditions under which the particular subroutine is invoked during the execution of a SQL request. The output code generated to execute a specific SQL query, including calls to the index processing subroutine in place of normally included calls to the lower component layer. This enables the generated code to perform lower component layer functions with specialized code designed to increase performance.
112 citations
Patent•
IBM1
TL;DR: In this article, a method, apparatus and computer program product are provided for building an image index and for searching and querying by image colors from a plurality of images including images from the internet or other network environment.
Abstract: A method, apparatus and computer program product are provided for building an image index and for searching and querying by image colors from a plurality of images including images from the internet or other network environment. First an index is built for each of the plurality of images. A selected number of levels is identified for image processing, and an upper resolution and a lower resolution are identified for each of the selected number of levels for image processing. An image is filtered at each selected level. A sample of pixels is acquired and stored at each selected level in the index. At query time, an image color is selected. A entry of the index is acquired. The acquired entry is compared with the selected image color. A match is identified responsive to the acquired entry being near the selected image color.
97 citations